Fortune Cookie Chronicles: What Happened To General Tso?

I was on a train last year reading a review copy of Boomsday by Christopher Buckley, which was not yet out in stores. The guy next to me noticed it, and told me "My friend's book is coming out from the same publisher next year." His friend turned out to be Jennifer 8. Lee, whose amusing name I'd occasionally noticed in New York Times bylines. Her first book was going to be about the history of Chinese food in America.

I had a long talk with the fellow, a writer for Psychology Today magazine. We talked about publisher Jon Karp's unique business model for Twelve (they publish exactly twelve books a year, apparently skipping all the mediocrities and aiming for a single success each month), and he told me all about Lee's book, which was called The Long March of General Tso. I liked the idea immediately, and I told him so. It's history, it's immigration, it's sociology ... The Long March of General Tso just sounded to me like a real corker in every way. Hilarious title, too.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this ad in this weekend's New York Times Book Review:

One woman.
One consuming obsession.
Forty thousand restaurants.

THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES

Author Jennifer 8. Lee has taken a remarkable journey into the secret world of Chinese restaurants: a cultural phenomenon with far greater influence and intrigue than we realize.

What the ... what happened to our history book? The Fortune Cookie Chronicles sounds like the kind of cutesy, chatty fluff I'd never read. I wouldn't even notice a book like this. I'm expecting Mark Kurlansky and I get ... Emeril.

Is this what happens when a publishing company needs every book it publishes to be a power seller? Well, I notice Lee says so directly when she writes about the title change on her blog:

Many people are sad about this, I among them. This brilliant title was conceived by my colleague Michael Luo. But the logic by my editor was this: If you already know the book is on Chinese food, then you will think it is incredibly witty. But if you saw it in a book store though, would you think it’s about Qing dynasty military strategy?

I also see that Gawker had a good time with this ("Jennifer 8. Lee Gets Blog, Immediately Adorably Overshares"). Pretty funny. Well, if I were Jennifer 8. Lee I would have stuck up for the better title. Is it really a publisher's valid role to dumb down a good book in a bid for bigger sales? If so, I don't think Jennifer 8. Lee got a great deal with this arrangement.

Well, for all I know Fortune Cookie Chronicles may be a good book -- I haven't seen it yet, just the ad. I'll let you know, or you can let me know if you know.

2. Sarah Weinman on the debut of TitlePage.tv, an upscale "books" webcast. It's hard to improve on Sarah's analysis, except to offer the observation that Charles Bock deserves some kind of points for showing up decked out like a backup dancer in the video of Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl". I don't really get it, but it's kinda cool.

4. A much-written-about early collaboration between Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs called And the Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks is surfacing. Honestly, I can't say I'm expecting much, but we'll see. I am more excited about two upcoming Beat Generation films: Corso: The Last Beat (it's about time we saw a film biography of Gregory Corso) and One Fast Move Or I'm Gone, about Jack Kerouac in Big Sur, featuring David Amram, John Ventimiglia, Michael McClure, Patti Smith, Sam Shepard, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Carolyn and John Cassady.

"The Fortune Coookie Chronicles" got a rather lengthy review in yesterday's Newsday, and there was no mention of the working title. Heller McAlpin, the reviewer, pretty much called the book "jumbled and overwhelming". Here's the last paragraph of the review in its entirety -- it kind of says it all:
"The Fortune Cookie Chronicles" offers a rich medley of flavors that would be more delicious had the chef exercised some restraint: A clearer chronology and narrative line would allow each ingredient to sing. As it stands, Lee's concoction, although tasty, smacks at times of chop suey -- that catchall dish that translates from Cantonese as "odds and ends.".

And many thanks for mentioning and linking to my heartfelt Buckley tribute.

Eli

by TKG on Tuesday, March 4, 2008 05:01 am

Any title with Long March in it is pretty nastily offensive. That title would be like calling a book about German Beer Beck's Beer Hall Putsch. Or Apple Strudle's Night of Long Knives. Or German Chocolate Uber Alles.

Thanks for the Newsday quote. I still hope I'll like the book (which would require it to be a lot better than Newsday makes it sound).

TKG, I see your point about "Long March" being offensive. On the other hand, I think having the Olympics in China (still a totalitarian nation, still oppressing Tibet, etc.) in 2008 is even more offensive!

by TKG on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 12:16 am

Hi Levi,

I agree except I don't think it is another hand I think it is the same hand.

On another common issue, a book, well reviewed recently in the NY Times was seen to be, guess what, a non-fiction autobio that was in fact a hoax.

Love and Consequences - a made up story about growing up in gang life which did not happen and the author is not who she says she is.

Deja vu all over again.

by WFB on Thursday, March 6, 2008 09:57 pm

I honestly do not understand the respect that Buckley gets. Just his voice alone is grating and pompous in the extreme. In my opinion this was a man very far removed from the basic reality of society (any society). Just check out his "interview" with Noam Chomsky on Youtube, to see the true nature of this man. A wealthy man with every advantage, he devoted his adult life to doing nothing but protecting the status quo. Rush may weep at his passing, I do not.

What do corporate book publishers like Random House, Simon and Schuster and Farrar Straus and Giroux have in common with financial powerhouses like Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG? If you guessed that they are all doomed, you're wrong.

Here's the right answer: the book industry, like the financial industry, should be in much better shape than it is.

Prompted by Tom McCarthy's trendy new novel C, AbeBooks presents a tableau of one-letter (or two-letter) books. It's a lot of fun to look at. Of course, I'm an old school techie, so to me C will always be the title of a classic book by Kernighan and Ritchie.

While we're watching counterculture moments on television from the 1960s, here's something else I just stumbled across: an appearance by the joyful jazz composer and performer David Amram on the kid's show Wonderama. He demonstrates his favorite world-music instruments, and naturally leads a jam session with the kids, who are way into it.

Exactly 150 years today, the most grueling and relentless ten days of the Civil War in the United States of America began. These are the opening days of the Overland Campaign, in which two armies rampaged south through north-central Virginia in a race to Richmond, capital city of the Confederacy. They stopped frequently along the way to try to kill each other.

Sam Harris almost understands something great when he declares that consciousness is fragmentary and that the self is an illusion. He would be closer if he declared that consciousness is fragmentary and that the self is elusive.

Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Kerouac, a French-Canadian child on March 12, 1922 in working-class Lowell, Massachusetts. Ti Jean spoke a local dialect of French called joual before he learned English. The youngest of three children, he was heartbroken when his older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of nine.

Ti Jean was an intense and serious child, devoted to Memere (his mother) and constantly forming important friendships with other boys, as he would continue to do throughout his life. He was driven to create stories from a young age, inspired first by the mysterious radio show 'The Shadow,' and later by the fervid novels of Thomas Wolfe, the writer he would model himself after ...

Like the French Impressionist artists of Paris, the Beat writers were a small group of close friends first, and a movement later. The term "Beat Generation" gradually came to represent an entire period in time, but the entire original Beat Generation in literature was small enough to have fit into a couple of cars (at times this nearly happened).

What do corporate book publishers like Random House, Simon and Schuster and Farrar Straus and Giroux have in common with financial powerhouses like Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG? If you guessed that they are all doomed, you're wrong.

Here's the right answer: the book industry, like the financial industry, should be in much better shape than it is.

Prompted by Tom McCarthy's trendy new novel C, AbeBooks presents a tableau of one-letter (or two-letter) books. It's a lot of fun to look at. Of course, I'm an old school techie, so to me C will always be the title of a classic book by Kernighan and Ritchie.

While we're watching counterculture moments on television from the 1960s, here's something else I just stumbled across: an appearance by the joyful jazz composer and performer David Amram on the kid's show Wonderama. He demonstrates his favorite world-music instruments, and naturally leads a jam session with the kids, who are way into it.

Exactly 150 years today, the most grueling and relentless ten days of the Civil War in the United States of America began. These are the opening days of the Overland Campaign, in which two armies rampaged south through north-central Virginia in a race to Richmond, capital city of the Confederacy. They stopped frequently along the way to try to kill each other.

Sam Harris almost understands something great when he declares that consciousness is fragmentary and that the self is an illusion. He would be closer if he declared that consciousness is fragmentary and that the self is elusive.

Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Kerouac, a French-Canadian child on March 12, 1922 in working-class Lowell, Massachusetts. Ti Jean spoke a local dialect of French called joual before he learned English. The youngest of three children, he was heartbroken when his older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of nine.

Ti Jean was an intense and serious child, devoted to Memere (his mother) and constantly forming important friendships with other boys, as he would continue to do throughout his life. He was driven to create stories from a young age, inspired first by the mysterious radio show 'The Shadow,' and later by the fervid novels of Thomas Wolfe, the writer he would model himself after ...

Like the French Impressionist artists of Paris, the Beat writers were a small group of close friends first, and a movement later. The term "Beat Generation" gradually came to represent an entire period in time, but the entire original Beat Generation in literature was small enough to have fit into a couple of cars (at times this nearly happened).